


This Ain't Star Wars, Ben

by orange_8_hands



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Abortion, Adoption, Daddy Issues, Episode: s06e21 Let It Bleed, F/M, Gen, Pregnancy, Repressed Memories, Unplanned Pregnancy, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:49:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five fathers Ben Braeden could have had</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Ain't Star Wars, Ben

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my LJ](http://orange-8-hands.livejournal.com/1349.html), Oct 2011.
> 
> TW: one mention of off-screen child abuse (towards minor character) in part 5; canon mind-wipe

  
_I. The Guy From English Comp 101_

Her roommate is smirking, because she wears her virginity like a banner, announcing it to the world ( _what, that doesn't count, Lisa_ ), and while Lisa has hated her from hour one, day one hundred and fifty-two has shown her that was a young hate, a baby hate, and Lisa has now entered into the mature hate of an adult, so when she thinks "punching you in the face would be awesome," she is seriously contemplating it, and not just in the way she does when her roommate says things like "it's a precious gift, Lisa."

Breanna is shoving her out of the door, locking it and then collapsing dramatically on her roommate's bed - Breanna makes sure to leave her dirty sneakers on, maybe wipes them a little extra on the yellow comforter - and Lisa would smile but she is torn between hatred and _freaking the fuck out_.   

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck," Lisa chants, still staring at the stick. College has done many things, and expanding her vocabulary is one of them, but panic has turned Lisa's mind back to the simple and straight forward. "What the fuck do I do?" 

Breanna has her hands on her knees and is staring at Lisa. It is the same stare that had her explaining math - math makes no sense, and Lisa hates that it's a requirement - and not the stare that leads to getting fake IDs. It is the smart stare, the _we'll figure it out_ stare, and Lisa feels a wave of love for her friend skate under the mind blowing panic.

"I used protection," Lisa says, because she does, every damn time, even when the guy mutters things like "I'll pull out" or "it feels better without it, baby," because she paid attention when her mom explained the birds and the bees, and how little birds or bees can screw up your future plans, so make sure your flowers are ready to support them and the nest is built. It's quite possible her mom took the metaphor too far, but Lisa always made sure she had at least a condom, and usually her diaphragm, because her mom was right and Lisa was not ready for a little bird or bee. "I'm not ready for a little bird or bee," she tells Breanna, who either followed her train of thought or is ignoring it, because she says, "It doesn't matter how it happened, it matters what you do now that it has."

"That's either really wise or really stupid," Lisa says.

"Wise," Breanna says, and then adds, "Whose the father anyways?"

"Johnny Tempton," Lisa mutters.

Breanna stares. "We're going with a woman's right to choose, right?"

It's too soon, but Lisa laughs anyways.

 

_II. The Guy She Was Married To_

He is patting her shoulder and trying not to make whimpering noises because holy fucking shit _she is crushing his hand_ , offering to breath and get ice and apparently being a goddamn mess of support, when she tells the story later, but both of them stop focusing on that, her because she's "pushing a beluga whale out of a dime sized hole oh fuck this hurts this hurts this hurts" and him because holy shit, his wife is pushing a beluga whale out of a dime sized hole and its hurting her. (He actually went to all the classes, thank you very much, and knows the hole gets to be ten centimeters, and a baby is not actually the size of a beluga whale, or any whale. However, when he first pointed that out to her - around hour three - she had calmly asked if he would like his head to be pushed through her room's window, and he had taken the hint and adopted her terminology for the remaining nine hours.)  

And she's pushing - and crushing, his hand is fucking _broken_ \- on doctor's orders and this squalling red thing is flashed at them, and then there's something about having to still birth the placenta and he's okay admitting he blanked out the next half hour, but then they are handing him this baby, this completely red, mushy, fragile misshapen baby, and he doesn't even have time to prepare himself because he thought he had loved his kid, he thought he knew what loving his kid would be like, but he couldn't have known this. The fiercest sense of _cradle love hold protect die for_ fills him as he and Lisa count his little toes, and his fingers, and decide he has his nose and her mouth. (The kid looks smushed, actually, and like the average new born, but he is a daddy and he can see his nose and her mouth behind the smushed look.)

"Look at him," he keeps saying, over and over again.

"Just look at my kid."

 

_III. The Guy Who May Have Adopted Him_

She's not sure she can do this.

The guy is nice. He is nice and his wife is nice and his car is better than nice, it's a yellow 1970 Barracuda, but Lisa is starting to think nice is not enough. She wants to go back in time and get an abortion, whatever going to hell her mom says that entails, and she wants to go further back in time and not sleep with one George 'I love you baby' Kilton (screw love, she just wanted to do it in a 1968 GTO, red like a fire engine). She does not, did not want a kid, but she's not sure if she can hand over a part of herself to people who may or may not be trustworthy, however nice they (and the car) seem. 

"We've wanted a child for a long time," he says, and Lisa gets that, sure, she's wanted a kid too, in some hazy future that probably included marriage or something, but definitely did not include now. He is earnest and she is hopeful and Lisa would like to say sure, let me pop him out in another two months and you can take him, but there is something stopping her. She did not plan this and she did not want it, and it would have been so much easier to stop it before it grew into this thing that likes to sleep on her bladder and hit her navel whenever she plays pop music, as if to dance to the beat of all her favorite songs. 

"We want-" and Lisa cuts her off, has to, can't listen to the fact she's going to dash their dreams for something she's not sure she wants and knows she's not ready for, but also can't sign away.

"I'm sorry," she says, watching their faces fall. They'd been doing this too many years not to know what that meant.

"I'm sorry," she says again, and two months later she names him Ben because he really did seem like a nice guy.

 

_IV. The Guy Who Stayed Over One Night_

They had been dating nine months, sneaking moments between dropping Ben off at kindergarten and picking him up, in between Lisa's yoga classes and his karate classes, in between living two separate lives, one of which included a small child. They have sex in the mornings, where the hours stretch out and they can lay in bed together, twine bodies as flesh meets flesh, twine words as they share life stories and dreams and all the most important memories. Dates include breakfasts and early lunches and every once in a rare while a night out, Lisa running back into the house at least twice to kiss her son's cheek one more time and drown in the guilt of single motherhood.

They had been dating nine months but they knew each other two years at this point, teaching classes through the same gyms, a connection running through mutual friends and shared hobbies. He had been introduced to Ben slowly, with shared meals scattered across the months and Disney movies sliding into evenings until bed time and once as an emergency babysitter.

One night he fell asleep to the song of Simba's desire to be king, and he woke in stages to the feel of a hand knitted throw over his body ( _my grandma made me this when I was twelve,_ Lisa had told him, hands gliding up and down his chest, half soothing and half arousing), the smell of pancakes in the air, the giggles of a delighted little boy. He's smiling when he walks into the kitchen and sees them, and Ben babbles about the politics of kindergarten and if he can get a puppy. Lisa absently runs a hand across his back as he fixes himself coffee, and his heart overflows because this, this is what he wants, all of this for the rest of his life.

 

_V. That Guy Who Stood in the Hospital Doorway_

He stares at the guy and just wants him gone. His mom is fine – she’s _fine_ – but she’s lying in a hospital bed and he has a sick coating in his stomach, a burn in his eyes. His cheek tingles like its been slapped, his hands ache like when he holds his baseball bat too hard for too long, his shoulders still clenched and bruises like fingertips on his arms. He has droplets of blood on his dirty jeans but no cuts, and he doesn’t feel like he’s been in an accident, not one involving seat belts and bad drivers. He’s shaking, just slightly, not enough for his mom to see, for his mom to catch when she’s not a hundred percent, but enough that he has to hold himself with care.

She gives the guy absolution – Ben’s okay, so everything is okay – but it isn’t and he doesn’t know _why_.  The guy looks like he’s about to cry, voice dragging over vocal chords, and says “take care of your mom” before he leaves, which a. duh, he doesn’t need some stranger telling him to care for his mom and b. his mom hates when men tell him things like that. _You’re a kid, be a kid, and I’ll be the parent, and ignore the man of the house crap people throw at you._

He doesn’t feel like the man of the house. He feels like he almost lost his mom, and he’s never thought that before. He’s never been in danger, never had that brush with mortality by pretending he could fly off the roof or fall through an obstacle course of broken metal parts, and until today she hadn’t either. (Not today, she’s fine.)  No funerals he was dragged to wearing a too small suit. No neighbors kneeling over in the driveway or mowing their lawn, clutching their chests like a cartoon.

It’s always been him and his mom, a family of two. She’s always been honest about his dad, and even if he had an ache inside him sometimes he was okay, he didn’t need a dad, not really. There had been enough boyfriends over the years trying to get into his good graces that he got enough of the effect. Plenty of his mom’s guy friends covering the gaps the boyfriends left. Plus it’s not like dads were always good – he wasn’t stupid, Jeremy didn’t get those bruises from playing.

But for the first time he’s feeling that lack. His mom has no more family left, and yeah, he bets she’s made plans, ran through the what-ifs; he’ll probably live with Linda, or maybe Bob and Joyce, or maybe even Tom and Rebecca (it would be awkward to lust after his guardian, he hopes its not Tom and Rebecca), but there’s no more family, no more blood out there to take him in. They’ve been living in the new place a few months, and his mom makes friends easy, so its not like he’d be alone, but he would, he doesn’t know these people well enough. He doesn’t have a phone number he can call if something bad happens to her, if something happens to them. Like, what if someone breaks in?

Okay, so he’d call the cops, bad example, but his mind is moving now, coming up with loads of examples, real examples that could happen, and he wants a number, he wants a number were a heavy voice can tell him exactly what to do because he can. not. lose. his. mom.

(She’s _fine_.)

**Author's Note:**

> End Note 1: The summary suggests that Ben would have been Ben in any situation, that the Ben-ness of him - his soul, his personality, whatever you want to call it - would have been the same no matter what. I don't necessarily believe that. Partly yes, just like partly genetics and partly environment and partly choice and partly chance and partly luck all play a role in making you who you are, for better, worse, or somewhere in between, but I don't think switching out fathers wouldn't affect who Ben is and will be. Because changing fathers also changes circumstances, and choices, and chances, and not just genetics. I'll also add I am completely pro-choice, adoption is a hard choice to make, and I looked up "classic muscle cars."
> 
>    
> End Note 2: So I wrote number five first, and it was interesting because missing memories means the weekend when Lisa and Dean first meet, the later meet-up when Dean saves Ben from whatever the monster of the week was, and then the last year all disappear, but the changes they’ve made (moving houses, and since Ben wasn't healed all the physicality of the kidnapping) are still there. The show does a piss-poor job of explaining what happens for them - is the boyfriend lying dead in their house? Is there a car fake crashed? (Can I once again say how much I hate Dean taking their memories? And basically everything the writers do with Lisa and Ben?)


End file.
